Scream
by The Atomic Cafe
Summary: When the job and Mac's personal life become too intertwined, Claire saves her husband.


**Scream**

**By Dimgwrthien**

_Disclaimer: I do not own CSI:NY or affiliates._

Mac Taylor doesn't hear the screaming until it's too late.

He stands over the stove, stirring the soup in the metal pot slowly, trying to concentrate on the light breathing of his wife as she sits on the couch, turned to face him. She speaks slowly and comforting, explaining her day to him.

Then the screaming comes. It cuts over Claire's words like a bare knife, leaving her with her mouth moving a second before she understands it. Her expression is a mirror of his - not fear, but a wariness that she's grown used to. Her husband has worked for the police for years, and she knows what it's like to fear someone's life.

Mac has never considered saving a person's life. It's a routine to him, even if it's a routine that scares him. Even if he's trained himself to have an unreadable expression when he holds a person with a bloody hole in them, telling them to breath until someone comes, he's scared.

Claire's never seen anyone hold a gun the way Mac holds his. Once, she had been involved in a bank robbery at the closest bank. The man held his gun with a dangerous force, knuckles white, twisting his entire trunk to threaten them. Mac, meanwhile, grabs at his waist where he's forgotten to take off his holster again, and holds the gun tight, but loose enough to use his hand to guide it.

He leaves the room quickly, giving Claire a short look, telling her to lock the door after him. It's his job, he's told her before. It's his job to make sure no one is injured. And Claire knows that it means something to him. Maybe it is his repayment to the world. You've killed men in my arms, you've had them killed under my blow, but you'll never have the chance to let another human harm them near me.

Claire doesn't listen to Mac. She grabs a small box of ammo from the table and one of the candlesticks, then follows him into the hall, watching him move slowly, waiting for another sound. She already knows that there's one bullet in his gun. As usual, he had to go to the shooting range during work to prove that his gun hadn't jammed, and shot off all but the last bullet. Mac didn't like the gun, and it made sense that he forgot to reload it.

Mac hears her footsteps, though, and turns to greet her face. His expression is momentary - go back, lock the door, and listen to me, Claire reads off of it, but she remains behind him.

And they hear the scream again, piercing, scared. Claire hears the sound of a door opening behind her and knows that someone is watching them, wondering why a woman is yelling and why two foolishly brave people are approaching the door.

Mac leans back and kicks at the door, managing to shatter the hinges. He observes the scene before him, walking quickly into the room, not bothering to turn to check his sides. Claire knows that Mac has the victim or the torturer - it had to be torture for all of the screaming as though the sky were falling - in his view. She follows close behind, remaining behind the door, too anxious of what she'll see. She's never been on a crime scene, never seen a dead body in her life, never saw what Mac saw every day.

She takes the plunge and enters the room behind Mac. No Mac. He's gone from her view, and her heart races, her fingers twitch around the candlestick and the box of ammo.

The walls are dirty, too dirty to fit into the apartment building. There's a bloody handprint on the wall, smeared. She finds herself wondering how anyone could lift prints off of it, and she knows that she's been looking at the world from the wrong point of the view. The crime scene investigators see a world where there is no crime, only the side effects. The disease is gone, but the fatigue remains. They see the traces left over and examine them. The closest they come to the crime is a made-up memory, a false perception.

Claire doesn't start seeing the world until she looks down the barrel of a gun.

She doesn't move. The world looks like a small place when your life is crammed inside of that black hole, rather like a pinpoint. But when she looks above the gun, over the cold metal exterior, she sees a man with Mac in his grasp.

Since he joined the Marines, Mac has been able to take care of himself. Claire has watched him grab someone who attacked him from behind or from the front. She could never break out of her awe of him, and once asked him to teach her how. He did so until she gave up once she twisted her arm trying to get his arms in front of her. It takes her a minute of staring into Mac's eyes to see why he hadn't been able to throw the man off. There's a wound in his stomach, round with jagged edges, and she knows it's a gunshot. She can't remember ever hearing a gunshot, but she can't remember anything but the rush of blood into her head.

The man holds a knife to Mac's throat as well as the gun to Claire. Claire recognizes the tipping down of the gun, and she sets the ammo and candlestick down slowly, not noticing what she set them on until she stood up straight. She knows that there is a woman's dead body near her feet with a slit throat and slit wrists.

The gun is back in her face, and the man growls at her. "Either back away and get out of here or I'll have to put one of these fuckers in your head."

Claire knows he's afraid because of the white knuckles on his gun. She doesn't move however, and her eyes remain concentrated on Mac's stomach. His hands are wrapped close to the wound, applying as much pressure as he could. He shook his head slightly, just as much as he could to get the message to Claire without slitting his own throat. "No," he mouthed.

The monster that held the weapons pressed the knife harder against his throat, letting out a droplet of blood. Claire found her eyes trailing it down his neck onto his shoulder, giving his shirt a small stain.

Eternity was spread out before her. Claire watched another droplet of blood go down, down, down into Mac's shirt. She watched the haunted look in the man's eyes twist his gaze between the knife on Mac and Claire's own face.

"Let's make a deal," she whispers to him, and she can see Mac close his eyes in desperation as he mouths to her again. "Give him to me and the police won't find out about any of this."

The man snorts at her, his gaze falling back on Mac. "I already know who this man is." The knife is thrust deeper, and Mac hisses. Claire watches a bit more blood slip down his throat, this time spilling faster and faster until she can't tell the droplets apart.

Now.

She grabs onto the gun as quickly as possible, twisting the man's elbow. Claire doesn't bother loosening his grip. She just twists his finger enough to pull his own trigger and ignores the grunt from Mac as the man digs the knife just a bit deeper. The shot rings in her ears for too long. The image of the man's body toppling over, Mac still in his arms, lasted an age before she realized what just happened.

Bending down to get him, Claire speaks to Mac. "Can you hear me? Mac?" She presses two fingers against the uninjured side of his neck, feeling a pulse. She lets herself breath.

"Good… job, Claire," Mac whispers, his eyes barely open.

Claire grabs his shirt, moving him enough to get his head against her chest. He breathes as steadily as he possibly can, and she finds herself tying herself back to earth with the sound. Her head is light, but her heart seems to fill with sand and plummet to her stomach. She could only bring herself to press a hand to his gun shot wound, listening to him reassure her as though she was the injured one, and pulling out the cell phone from Mac's pocket.

"I need help," she says lamely to the phone, and she starts crying. They ask her pointless questions, and she chokes out a reply for each of them, breaking off several times to take a deep breath. No one in the apartment has found them yet, and Claire tells herself that it's just her and Mac, both alive in the world, as she rocks them both back and forth.

Back and forth.


End file.
